I'm director of the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at the Cronkite School at Arizona State. I'm also author of the Forbes eBook Curbing Cars: America's Independence From The Auto Industry. I was Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, and led Changing Gears, a public media project that studied the industrial Midwest. E: vmaynard@umich.edu T @mickimaynard @curbingcars

Light, Quick And Cheap: The Big Shift In Urban Planning

In the past, remaking cities has been the stuff of big visions. Think of Chicago’s Daniel Burnham, who declared, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Or Robert Moses, the public planning guru of New York City.

Now, as cities across the United States try to rejuvenate themselves, there is a new mantra: lighter, quicker, cheaper.

It’s at the heart of an overlooked kind of urban development called place making, focused not so much on architecture or public works, as making sure spaces actually work for city residents. (Grammar note: practitioners call it “placemaking” without a space.)

Rather than build more skyscrapers, meant for the people who work there, place making is a street level way of bringing activity to downtowns and neighborhoods.

This shift is the subject of a new white paper, called Places In the Making, led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It takes a look at how place making is spreading across the United States, from New York City to Houston, Detroit to San Francisco, and to smaller cities in between.

While place making isn’t new, it’s come into focus because of the economy. In hard-hit places, particularly Detroit, these smaller projects are filling the void created by a lack of funding for marquee projects.

“The whole move to what we call lighter, quicker, cheaper has been in response to a number of things,” says Susan Silberberg, a lecturer in urban design and planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

“It’s a response to top down, regulation heavy environments where it was difficult to make changes. And, it’s in response to constrained resources.”

The idea of less money to make big changes is actually providing a variety of new opportunities, built on making smaller changes, and involving residents and community groups, and to creativity, she says.

Says Silberberg: “There’s no pressure that ‘we have to get it right, it’s going to cost millions of dollars.’ There’s less at stake, nobody is going to lose their job over it. That has just opened up the field to a lot of wonderful things.”

One such project was New York’s Bryant Park, behind the city’s main public library, which had a decades-long reputation as a hang out for drug dealers. The park’s physical renovation, completed in 1992, was just a first step, said Fred Kent, founder of the Project for Public Spaces, which played a lead role in the redesign.

What clinched the park’s success, Kent says, was its programming — the activities and events that draw New Yorkers and tourists to Bryant Park year round. It took key, yet relatively inexpensive steps like providing wi-fi, as well as kiosks selling breakfast, lunch and snacks, plus seasonal features like a skating rink and holiday pop up shops.

“You move away from design to what you can do in it,” Kent said. “You try to build a whole destination.”

This also allows opportunities for corporate involvement, for less outlay. Southwest AirlinesSouthwest Airlines, for instance, has been involved in Bryant Park, as well as in Detroit. While these place making projects don’t provide the visibility of naming a stadium or arena, they put a company’s name out front in a neighborhood.

The growing emphasis on place making is linked to renewed interest in public transportation, which is seeing record demand, and in walkable communities.

Kent says that as a city assembles its network of public places, there’s less emphasis on using cars to reach them. “If there’s one thing, you’re going to drive to it,” he says. “If there are 10 of them, all of a sudden, you’re connecting them, and it’s a whole point of not needing your car.”

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